Home Grown
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN FOR DENNIS IN THE WORLD OF TURF ….. IAN HOWARD TELLS THE STORY John and Raymond Dennis were brought up in Huntsham in Devon. John then moved to Guildford where, whilst working for an ironmonger Filmer & Masons, he started making bicycles in his spare time. These sold at a profit and in 1895 he set up his own business, the Universal Athletic Stores in Guildford High Street, selling bicycles and other sports goods. Here he was joined by his brother Raymond and the enterprise expanded. The first motorised vehicle, a tricycle fitted with a single cylinder De Dion engine built in 1898. This was followed by the first proper car being built in 1901. At about this time, the business became a private limited company, Dennis Brothers Limited. Production expanded and in 1908 Dennis made their first fire engine. By 1909, over 400 staff were employed in the works. Big changes followed the First World War with Dennis export business growing and expanding into the field of municipal vehicles such as road sweepers and vacuum gully emptiers. Lawn mower production started in 1922 having produced their first prototype the year previously. The company was already doing a lot of business with the local authorities so it was a logical step as they were responsible for looking after many acres of public parks. The first mower was a well engineered product and quickly caught the attention of golf, cricket, tennis and football clubs together with private houses as ornamental lawns were very popular at that time. By 1925 Windsor Castle was a Dennis Mower user as were many of the fine houses and estates around Great Britain and the Colonies. The mowers were innovative too and Dennis was the first motor mower manufacturer to include a differential in the rear roller allowing it to be turned without marking the grass. Quick to see the benefits an early Dennis brochure claimed “the mower could do in 3.5 hours a job that would take two men and a horse 7 hours”! Dennis Brothers Limited, being very much an Engineering company, had skills and experience in press work, castings and what was in its time highly complex machining. From the early 1930’s they were not only known for producing the mower, but also the mower engine. Initially Dennis used bought in engines from firms such as Blackburn & Bradbury but by 1934 Dennis was producing its own engine due to the high demand for its quality machines. They started by producing a side valve engine, very large cc capacity (600cc) which was a big engine then and able to be run very slowly for lawn mower applications which nobody else did at the time – they were very innovative. They used good quality gearing and
heavy duty clutch systems. There were all sorts of advancements as time went by, like automotive components such as clutches, but they didn’t change things for change sake, or just to suit the changing requirements of the customers. Quality of manufacture was very important and one of their early manuals stated that with good care, this machine will last forever! A sentiment we echo in the Dennis production facility today. Mowers were exported around the world to every corner of the empire and beyond. In just 12 years the market had expanded tremendously and everyone was demanding the coveted Dennis stripe. During World War II Dennis switched production to war work producing a wide range of military equipment, including the assembly of Churchill Tanks, but by 1945 the war was over and production of buses, lorries, fire engines and mowers picked up again. However, by the late 1950’s the traditional Dennis Mower was becoming outdated relying on 1920’s technology which, whilst strong and reliable, did not reflect modern manufacturing techniques. The Premier mower was developed in the late 1950’s using a more modern 600cc single cylinder crank start engine made by Dennis. In 1962 the Premier collected a gold medal at Southport Flower Show. The range was limited to 24”, 30” and 36” machines and the decision was taken to develop Guildford Gang Mowers to trail behind the seat of the Premier. The 20” and 24” Paragon were also bought into production utilising the Villiers C30 engines. The 1960’s were turbulent times and Dennis Bros Limited were finding it difficult to survive. By the end of the decade it had stopped bus production and its new updated trucks failed to make any significant impact on the haulage market. In view of this the company took the decision to concentrate on its strongest products – municipal vehicles and fire appliances - but these were low volume, high labour input and the company struggled to make ends meet. In early 1972 the whole company was bought by Hestair. Mower manufacturing was moved from Guildford to Kent, but in 1976 the production of Premiers and Paragons was subsequently sold to one of the subcontractors Godstone Engineering (of Godstone, Surrey), whilst the Guildford Gang Mowers was sold to Howards Engineering (now Howardson Ltd). Howards had put in a bid in for both divisions but were only successful in securing the Gang Mowers. However, by 1981 Godstone Dennis was in difficulties and Howards Engineering achieved its’ original goal and all stock and production moved to Derby.
Howards Engineering is a third generation family engineering business having been started by my Grandfather, Wilfred Howard in 1938. As motor engineers, they’d maintained one of the local houses’ Dennis mowers so had knowledge of Dennis machinery. When the opportunity arose to purchase Dennis in the early 1980’s my Father, Philip Howard, who was then the MD of the business, went off to Godstone in Surrey and purchased the assets of the ‘Godstone Dennis’ as it was then called. I was a student at the time and helped move the 10 articulated lorries of equipment, spare parts and machinery to our engineering works at Derby. With over 45 years of engineering experience in subcontract manufacture and jig and tool work the Dennis acquisition was a great move. I wasn’t working in the business at that time, but did so in 1985 to take on the marketing and selling of the Dennis product. My father was concentrating on the engineering side of the business with major contracts for British Rail, British Steel and many other local manufacturing businesses. I started with a blank sheet of paper as I had no horticultural knowledge – didn’t have a clue about lawnmowers! I went on a number of courses at the local Technical College; attended seminars about promoting products and learning about how best to embrace marketing and sales. I did the spare parts at that time as well as the sales, and was out demonstrating mowers all over the country. As the products had changed very little under both previous owners, investment in design was paramount. We initially set about making a lot of improvements to the Premier and Paragon machines,revamping them to accommodate reliable Kohler electric start engines, which were later superceded by Kubota petrol and diesel power units. We also took advantage in the advancement in laser cutting to improve, and cost reduce, manufacturing. By 1990 we were looking to expand the product range and acquired what was JP Mowers, originally from Leicester, from Cliftons of Woking. Co-incidentally JP had started producing mowers in the same year as Dennis and, in its day, had a reputation as the ‘Rolls Royce’ of domestic lawnmowers with many
machines still in use today. I considered the JP cassette system, originally designed in the early 1960’s, to be a good basis to move us into bowling green and cricket wicket mowers. We set about prototyping the ‘FT’ as a 20” version and took it to Saltex in 1993 to get some initial feedback. The JP cassette system was originally only for simple removal of the cutter unit, but as the groundsman and greenkeepers at the show told us, it would be ideal for scarifiers, vericutters, brushes and other options. We were inundated with interest and help from people to move the product forward which we managed to do by 1994. From that date we made literally thousands and thousands of FT’s that have gone all over the world cutting bowls and cricket and tennis turf. In the late 1990’s the need for a machine for larger areas of turf, cricket outfields and rugby, was evident. With the help of a number of people in the football market, we set about developing the G series of machines - a range of models both cassette and non cassette based, but all with common parts to give flexibility and keep stock inventories to a minimum. The range was launched in 1999 and has been very successful. Our strength has always been that we don’t only design machines but we manufacture the parts and assemble the finished product as well. We’ve always maintained a ‘feet on the ground’ philosophy to achieve the best possible results. We moved our manufacture and assembly facility to our current site at Kirk Langley in 1988. As the product line progressed, so did the need for more space and we built a dedicated 10,000 sq ft at the rear of the site. Since 1998 sales have almost tripled and we’re bursting at the seams with the need for yet more space. Building work started in mid August 2009 for a new building of 9,600 sq ft next to the existing factory. That will give us in effect a doubling of our space for manufacturing and assembly. This substantial investment will create an impressive state-of-the-art production facility and help us to expand further our product offering. We’ve always prided ourselves on being a UK manufacturer, with the majority of components made by us in Kirk Langley. We are firm believers in quality control, short production times, and an ability to respond to change and improvement – that’s where our roots lay and we where we
intend to keep them. We have many many years of experience behind us in mower manufacture. Sometimes the answers are in the history books rather than in the future, however, our own product development has been revolutionised by our CAD system. This has given us the ability to design, develop and prototype machines very rapidly – what used to take years now takes months. Currently we have a lot of design and development work in process, not only fine tuning existing models, but also with a view to additional products. I took over as MD in 1995 when my Father semi-retired. I’m now the Principal Share holder and it’s very important to me that Dennis is successful. To maintain our position as a quality product I believe reinvestment in the business is crucial, especially in new technology. As such we have spent significant sums in highly efficient machining centres from HAAS; have worked with the philosophy of Kaizen and adopted Japanese lean manufacturing programmes for keeping stocks to a minimum and production to a maximum. Since 1922 Dennis Mowers has served a predominantly UK market, which we still do with a network of some 40 Dealers and 3 fulltime Sales Managers on the road. Over the last three decades we have steadily been exporting machines all over the world. We’ve sold to Poland, Russia, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Iceland, Canada, America, Australia, the Far East, the Middle East, Pakistan, Bangladesh, all manner of different countries. Much of this has come about by word of mouth – by people talking to British Groundsmen and Greenkeepers who have helped spread the word for us, raving about the performance of the product. We’ve now set up a worldwide distribution network for countries that we deal with on a regular basis. To sum up, Dennis Mowers is a successful and profitable British manufacturing business; employing 20 people which is operated as a business, not a hobby! Our target is significant growth in the next 5 years.